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Volvo Ocean Race update

Knut Frostad on more entries, the Indian Ocean piracy situation and the new TV plan

Just over seven months to go now until the start of the Volvo Ocean Race. At present six boats are set to be on the start line with new boats from Puma, Groupama, Camper (Team NZ), Abu Dhabi and a Spanish team, yet to be announced for some reason. Currently training out of Vigo, the mysterious Spanish team are also planning to field Telefonica Blue in this year's event.
Ideally they would like two more teams, says VOR CEO Knut Frostad, but as yet there is no news. “We have a couple in the pipeline and we are working very hard with them. It is taking a bit more time, but we are making some progress.”
He points out that in fact at present they are exactly where they were this time before the start of the last race with six fully funded teams, Green Dragon only finding their main sponsor in May as the same time as Ger O’Rourke came in with what would become the Delta Lloyd campaign.
“The key thing for us is the quality of the teams and going into the future with this race, that is our strategy - we want it to be the race for the best sailors and as it is quite costly to do the race there isn’t really room for a huge amount of teams. Quality-wise, the top five teams we have I think on average are on a higher level than we have ever had before. That will prove to be a very good fight among the top five, probably stronger any other racing than I’ve seen for a long time.”
Last week saw was the cut-off date for the teams in terms of training on their old boats. Next up is the launch of the new boats which will take place from

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